Hello, brothers and sisters.
I just got back in mid-November from a trip to Russia. They always say, “Praise God,” which is Slava Bogu. Can you say that? Slava means praise; Bogu is God. It is a really tough-sounding language, isn’t it—Russian? Slava Bogu.
So everywhere I went, all I could say when I shook hands was, “Slava Bogu, Slava Bogu.” And I had a wonderful time.
I want to sing two songs for you. You do not know the songs—I do not think you know the second song.
We are also indebted to the riches that we have from Christ and from all that we have in our background. One of my riches is my mother. She came to the Lord late in life. Really, just after I was saved, she was saved.
She only lived as a Christian for ten years when she went home to be with the Lord. But during those ten years, she really loved the Lord. She started writing songs for Jesus, and you know some of them: “Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit”—that is one of her songs—and “Every Key, Every Key.” That is another one.
Recently, my brother’s wife passed away. My brother realized that he needed to do something with his life, since he was getting to be sixty years old. One of the things he did was show me something I never knew: he had forty-two of my mother’s songs hidden away in a loose-leaf notebook in his attic.
He pulled them out, made copies, and sent them to me. So ever since June, I have had these forty-two songs. Now, I want to sing all forty-two for you, but that would take much too much time.
Let me just sing one of the songs. My mother never had the experience of fellowship life as we do, but she was filled with the Spirit. From the moment she was saved, her heart was locked on Jesus. Many of these songs have this theme. This is one of her songs, “Thy Changeless Love.”
Jesus, I long to see Thy dear face,
To look ever unto Thee.
The ways of Thy love
I eagerly trace,
So make them be real to me.Thy changeless love is poured out every day;
How deep is the joy it brings.
With grace such as this,
I will ne’er turn away.
O Jesus,
To Thee my faith clings.O blessed hope,
For one day I’ll be in heaven, where I’ll be shown
The King on His throne,
Who visited me,
And I’ll know Him as I am known.Thy changeless love is poured out every day;
How deep is the joy it brings.
From grace such as this, I will never flee away.
O Jesus,
To Thee my faith clings.
When I went to Russia, I brought an old guitar. I will tell you in a minute what happened—I left it there.
They saw the guitar and wanted me to sing a song. It is hard to sing with interpretation: you have to sing, wait, and then sing another line. I sang a few simple songs. I do not know if you know this song, “Oh, the Spirit of the Lord Is Here.” It is a nice song about the presence of the Spirit.
But the Russians are serious. I was fooling around on my way to Russia and started singing the song in a minor key. Everywhere I went, they wanted to hear it. They loved the song. I would sing it once, and they would say, “Please sing it again.” This was the simple song I sang everywhere.
Oh, the Spirit of the Lord is here;
I can feel His presence ever so near.
As we lift Him up in worship and praise,
As we magnify His holy name,
He will touch us if we will only believe.
So open up your heart and now receive;
Cast aside your every doubt and fear,
For the Spirit of the Lord is here.
Oh, the Spirit of the Lord is here;
I can feel His presence ever so near.
As we lift Him up in worship and praise,
As we magnify His holy name,
He will touch us if we will only believe.
So open up your heart and now receive;
Cast aside your every doubt and fear,
For the Spirit of the Lord is here.
How we thank You, Lord. When Your presence is with us, it is our consolation, our satisfaction, our life and breath, and our joy.
Lord, as we share about this trip to Russia and some of the things learned, we are so thankful that we can go out and come in by Your grace and mercy. Thank You, Lord, for Your great love for Your people all over this globe. Hallelujah to a God Who saves and Who loves today. We commit this time into Your hands, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, as you can see, I took some pictures. I put them in my computer to try an experiment with PowerPoint, although I am not a computer guy. We had better run these off before something goes wrong. I am always very suspicious of electronic machinery.
Without any further ado, I am just going to take you through some of them. I am also one of the worst picture-takers in the world. I do not know why I even bother, but here we go.
When you go to Russia, you are always looking for the true Russian people—like when Russians come here, they are looking for cowboys and Indians. I was looking for Cossack dancers and all kinds of things, looking for the real, typical Russian home.
I said to a brother, “Show me a typical Russian home.” He said, “Here we are.” This was out in the country. There is a reason I am showing you this. Here is another one.
This is the way they live. There is no plumbing inside. There is an outhouse in the back, and a water pump down the street where they pump water. They burn wood in their stove, and that is how they exist.
I was in central Russia, in two cities called Perm—like “permanent”—and Izhevsk. Izhevsk has 650,000 people. Perm has 1.3 million people.
Izhevsk is where they made the Kalashnikov machine gun. Perm had big factories where the Soviet Union used to produce weaponry, armored trucks, and everything. Now it is all out of business. There is massive unemployment.
People can buy vodka very cheaply and drink their sorrows away. Alcoholism is endemic. When a brother gets saved, by the grace of God, you can assume he has been an alcoholic. That is what the situation is like.
There are these two cities, and I went to both of them. Each city had a major church where they preached the gospel, and there were about three thousand people in each of these churches. But they also had one hundred and fifty house churches all over the place.
So many people are getting saved that they go out to a rural community and buy one of those little houses. That is me, in case you cannot tell—I look Russian, of course—and two brothers with me. This brother is the preacher of that little house church. It had just started.
Inside, the church was one room. They were having their first-anniversary celebration and gospel meeting.
Here is the pastor of a larger church in another town, with his wife. She almost died of cancer and had just come back from chemotherapy, but she puts on a wig and preaches the gospel. She is the main evangelist, and many people are getting saved.
They are a wonderful couple. They put out food and cookies, invite the neighbors in, and though there is snow on the ground and it is cold, the people come into the warm house, receive the love of Christ, and hear the gospel.
There are one hundred and fifty house churches. I did not have time to go to all of them, but I met a number of people like this, with precious stories of faithfulness to God in preaching the gospel.
Let me say right now: the work there is preaching the gospel. Ever since perestroika, and ever since Russia opened up, the people have been living in a vacuum. They have lost their jobs. There is no more Communist ideology. They have no ideology.
Drug addiction and alcoholism are terrible. Russia was connected to Afghanistan and heroin came in. Russia literally snorted the heroin of Afghanistan. But in that vacuum, the only hope in town is the gospel.
This little church has a rehabilitation center. They rent another building for about ten dollars a month, where they keep five or six alcoholics and drug addicts who have just been saved. They keep them together because they cannot let them go back out and fall.
In another little town, they rented a movie theater for thirty dollars and held gospel meetings. They filled the place because there was nothing else to do in town. Everyone came to the movie theater. A little group sang, and I preached the gospel afterward.
In both cities, the brothers overseeing the work had come out of Ukraine nine years earlier. In nine years, not only had three or four thousand people been saved in their city, but one hundred and fifty churches had been started. One brother was only thirty-eight years old. He had been a Christian and preached the gospel.
This was a high-wire charismatic act. I was walking a tightrope the whole time. They praised God until the roof started to tremble.
This meeting was in a large movie theater in Izhevsk. It probably held 1,200 people, and it was completely packed. Later, I spoke in another movie theater at six o’clock in the evening. They packed that place too. They did not have a church building; they simply rented these large buildings that the Communists had used and that were now useless.
They worshiped God for an hour. Before they sent the children out, they laid hands on all the children and prayed for them. It was a real blessing.
There I was singing, “Oh, the Spirit of the Lord,” with every line translated by a sister. I do not know how much to say, but the Lord was really there. What can you say? The Lord was there. His life was there.
This sister had such a cold that she could not speak. But she got up, I began singing, and she began to speak. I preached and she interpreted, and she was healed right there. We saw a number of healings take place because God was there with the power of His name. It was a wonderful thing.
This is the Bible school. I went for three reasons. First, I wanted to help them, and brothers and sisters from various places in the States knew I was going and sent, in the end, four thousand dollars. So I went to distribute some things.
Second, I went to teach in two Bible schools, one in each city. In Izhevsk, I spoke for twenty-four hours—three days, eight hours a day. In the other place, I spoke twenty-four hours over four days, six hours a day.
This poor sister had to interpret everything—with all of my slang and New York expressions. She often looked at me as if to say, “Where is this guy from?”
They had a little building that served as their Bible school. The students came in October, lived in a dormitory, and remained there until June.
Everybody who is saved is saved to serve. Nobody I met had Jesus as Savior but not as Lord. When they get saved, they get baptized, and then they say, “Why do you not go to Bible school?”
Not all of them become servants of God or evangelists, but this is where they send them out from. They send someone to a town, and the next thing you know, they receive a report that two churches have started in one home and then another village.
It is amazing what the Lord is doing. They cannot make professional ministers fast enough—just ordinary people going out, while people are being saved. Some of these Bible-school students are newly saved. They are there for a year, and then they go out.
It is impossible to do this. It is impossible. But God is in it.
Here is the class—except for that guy. You have them stand up and read the Scriptures just to keep them awake, because eight hours a day of me is too much.
We would read a passage of Scripture, perhaps two chapters, and I would teach on the whole thing. This girl kept falling asleep, even standing up. During one break, she came up to me and said, “Do you think God would use me like Kathryn Kuhlman and Aimee Semple McPherson?”
I did not even know she knew who those people were. But I tried to encourage her. I said, “It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with the size of God.” After that, she started listening and stopped falling asleep, which was good.
As you can see, the ratio was probably four women to one man. But that is what the Lord has to work with. They were precious, really precious brothers and sisters. They really loved the Lord. They were so hungry; they knew almost nothing except that they were saved.
This was the dormitory where the Bible students lived. I was there for the week, speaking those twenty-four hours with the students. On Saturday, we happened to be driving by, and the pastor asked, “Would you like to visit the dorm?”
There were fifty or sixty people in one house. This is how they stacked them up. There was a little girl who came to Bible school every day with her mother.
On the second day, she came up with a burning fever. They asked, “Would you please pray?” Of course, they expected God to do something. I prayed for her, and ten minutes later she was healed of the fever and running around. They all praised God.
Because God is there, you see. I do not go around healing people as a general rule. I try to deal with my own problems.
As I was leaving the dorm, I said, “Wait a minute.” They had only two outhouses for all those people. I asked, “Where do the people take a bath or a shower?” They said, “They do not. They have to go to some brother’s or sister’s house.”
A fellowship on the West Coast had given me two thousand dollars. When you have funds, you have to be prayerful about them. I asked, “Brother, how much would it cost to build a bathhouse?” They call it a banya. He said, “About two thousand dollars.”
I said, “Please, in Jesus’ name.” Those kids were so excited. They said I would be an honorary member of the Bible school. They wanted to give me a bath. It was amazing. But anyway, praise God.
Then we went to the rehabilitation center for drug addicts and alcoholics. This brother who traveled with me lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a precious brother who runs a mission organization that gives money to indigenous works. It does not try to do anything other than give money to things that are already happening, and I praise God for that.
He was preaching the gospel in the rehab center. There I was with my guitar, and they were singing away. When you see these brothers and sisters, remember that almost half of them have HIV. Yet they love the Lord.
They said they had two people with HIV who had lost their symptoms. They were praying for everyone and believing.
It is hard to explain my feeling in being there. Let me give you a little story about the guitar.
I have three guitars: Faith, Hope, and Charity. One guitar, Hope, was completely destroyed on a trip to India. The top was pulled up, the bridge was down—everything was damaged. I took it to my luthier, a guitar man, and he said, “No, it is not worth fixing. It cannot be done.”
I gave it to a brother and said, “If you want it, take it and fix it.” He took it to his repairman, who said it could not be fixed. But when I was going to Russia, I bought another guitar to take out there, though it was a crummy one.
One of the brothers in our fellowship repaired Hope with love and care. It sounded so good. I played it there, and afterward I gave it to them with a note in Russian. Of course, I write fluent Russian.
The note said:
This guitar’s name is Hope. She was hopelessly damaged. We took her to repairmen, and they said she could not be fixed. But a brother who loves Jesus pasted her together and fixed her up. So never give up hope.
I left the guitar with them. When they saw it, their eyes got big, because they had only a little crummy guitar. Now they had a guitar with which they could worship and praise God.
These young people really love the Lord. Every weekend, they go into the city, preach the gospel, bring other drug addicts out, and bring them to the camp.
There are many stories. This sister was the wife of a man named Dima, a Russian Jew who had been involved in the mafia and got saved. He was running this center.
In June, July, or maybe August, the mafia—or someone—came and took him away. As far as they knew, they killed him. They did not know whether it was the mafia or the government. There was no ransom note and no blackmail. They simply took him away.
His wife, Larissa, was now a widow, but she decided to stay and keep serving the Lord, helping these drug addicts. Another brother helping to run the work had come in two years earlier as a heroin addict. Now he was preaching the gospel.
Then we went to Perm, a city of 1.3 million. As we drove by, I asked, “What is that-looking building there?” They said, “That is the KGB.” Before perestroika, people used to go in there and never come out. It was right by Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is why I was there.
Russian Orthodox churches were everywhere. This one was literally a hundred yards from the meeting place of the Perm New Testament Church.
The snow there gets up to one and a half meters—about five feet. As we drove down the street, we came to their meeting place. They started with a little building and had grown into a larger one.
They had four services: at eight, at ten, and later in the day. I spoke at all four. We preached the gospel, gave an invitation, and twenty-five people would get saved. Then the next group would come in.
I do not know how many people got saved; we really do not know. But the people were so hungry, so desperate, so needy of the Lord, that there was a great response.
I am much too complicated to be a good evangelist. My mind is a very complicated process. I would preach the gospel, but thankfully, another brother would get up afterward, straighten everything out, and give the invitation. Many people got saved.
To them, it is simple: “You are dirty with sin, and you need Jesus to wash you with His blood. He will take you with a sponge and wash you with His blood. Then you can be saved and clean. Now, who wants to be saved?”
Then I get up and say, “Now let us talk about the dispensational dimensions of…” But anyway, I did preach the gospel. I tried to be simple, but it was tough. I am not fit for this job. Still, the Lord honored it because the people were hungry and ready.
Most people lived in huge apartment complexes built by the Soviet Union. They were completely falling apart. Half of them did not have running water. Everything leaked. The heat did not work. That was where they lived.
The place where I stayed in Perm used to be a sanitarium for mentally ill people. On Saturday nights, a sister named Julia would go downtown with about ten dollars’ worth of bread, food, and Gospels. She would bring home a couple of children under ten years old who were living on the streets.
There were many street children because alcoholism had ruined the families. Children were physically abused by their fathers, beaten, and mistreated, so they ran away. This was where they stayed.
My room was there for a week. The bed was about five feet long. The bathroom and kitchen were very basic. But I liked Russia: meat and potatoes at every meal. That was it.
There was also a cat. I do not really like cats, and I do not know why they like me. I kept saying, “Get down, get down,” but it came right back up. Of course, I left little bits of food. In Russia, you leave bits, and the cat gets them.
These brothers and sisters were staying in the same building with me in Perm. I was with them all week, but I did not speak Russian. I would say, “Slava Bogu, Slava Bogu,” and they would speak at length.
Finally, around Friday, I found out who they were. They had been to Bible school and were now in mission school.
These people were going out to Tatarstan, which is largely Muslim. They had started two churches in Tatarstan, and the Lord had opened the door. These brothers and sisters were learning Tatar.
Their names included Ratik, Alexei, Andrei, another Alexei, Vlad, Sergei, another Sergei, Rima, Marina, Irina, and Yulia. Can you remember all that? Listen: if you can remember, pray for them.
Some were going out in January and some in June. They were going to places where you could be killed for preaching Jesus, but that was what they were called to do.
I began looking at them and realized that some of them needed clothes. It was winter. Some had thin jackets, and I could see holes in their shoes.
Someone had given me five hundred dollars. I asked the assistant director, “Would five hundred dollars help?” She began to cry. She said they had been fasting one day a week, praying that they could have boots for the winter, jackets, and other necessities.
I said, “Please, in Jesus’ name.” One brother went to the store and got a pair of shoes and a new shirt. He wanted to show me. He was so happy. “Slava Bogu, Slava Bogu.” I said, “It is nothing, brother. Please. It comes from brothers and sisters in New York.”
Everywhere I went, they were praying for New York. They wanted to know what was happening in New York. A newspaper interviewed me because I came from New York. They even had a special service in Perm for people in New York. They were so burdened about what had happened to us.
A typical evangelist going out to a house church made about thirty dollars a month. Whenever I met one, I shook his hand with a hundred-dollar bill in my hand. He would go to his wife, and they would begin to weep.
Some Bible-school students had no income at all. I would give one hundred dollars to a dear sister, and she would become so excited that she ran to six or seven sister friends. They would divide it all and get some food, because they were only eating one meal a day at that time.
I do not want to make it sound too bad. The students stopped going to school for the summer and harvested potatoes in the fields. They were given ten tons of potatoes to last the winter, so they had potatoes at every meal. They were thankful—really thankful.
One brother began following me around. When he saw me coming down the stairs with my suitcases and guitar case, he ran up to help. I had to pull him away. He insisted on carrying things down the stairs. What precious brothers and sisters.
We had a final prayer with them. We said, “You are going where we cannot go. We pray that God will bless you and supply all your needs.” It was wonderful.
This was the rehab center in Perm. It had been a Communist youth farm, but after the end of communism it was empty. For fifty dollars a month, they had the farm. The people there were drug addicts and alcoholics in rehabilitation.
They had to do hard labor. I asked one man, “How do you like this hard labor?” He said, “Now I am a Christian. Now I work hard. I never worked before.” He had lived on the street selling drugs and doing this and that.
A brother from the States came and asked if they had animals for the farm. They did not, so he gave them five hundred dollars. They bought two cows and two sheep. Later they had more sheep and cows, their own milk, chickens running around, and they were building the farm.
One dear sister there had HIV. She was saved and filled with the Spirit. She came up for prayer and said, “Would you please pray? I want to be used by God, even if only for six months. But I want to be used by God.”
I laid my hands on her and prayed. She fell down immediately. They wanted the Lord so much. They knew about being slain in the Spirit. Believe me, I am not a slayer. I just wanted to pray. But what are you going to do? I was out of my element.
They said, “She has been touched by God.” They believed she had been healed. I did not know. Then everybody else came up and said, “Please pray.” I was out of my depth.
But they praised God morning, noon, and night. They went out and worked, came back, and praised God. That was all they lived for.
This was Edward, the pastor—or bishop, if you want to call him that—overseeing the one hundred and fifty churches in Perm, as well as the main church. He was thirty-two years old and already on the verge of a heart attack because he was working so hard. He went everywhere and preached the gospel everywhere. He had such a burden.
I told him I still had five hundred dollars to give. He did not want to take anything for himself. He said, “We have these pastors and these people.” Everything was for the work.
Then we were in the children’s area, where forty abandoned children were living. Julia went out on Saturday nights and brought in two or three children at a time.
One man had been a full-time cook in a restaurant. He got saved and became the full-time cook at the rehab center, making ten dollars a month. Good pay—all the food he could eat.
The children were sitting down to borscht and healthy food, with plenty of potatoes. One child had started eating and remembered that he had not prayed, so he closed his eyes and prayed.
One little boy had been so badly abused that you would not believe it. He ran up to us because we were like fathers to him. He knew Bob from a previous visit, came up, grabbed his leg, and would not let go.
They all sang about Jesus. There was a little girl who could not have been six years old. They found her on the street, where she had been for two months. I think another child there was her sister. She was happy to be inside.
Another girl had been badly sexually abused as a child. Now she lived there and was like a senior mother, though she was probably only ten years old. She loved the Lord and helped put out the food.
The heating system was improvised. A hot-water pipe ran through the building, and it was all jerry-rigged. This was simply the way it was.
Their storeroom held potatoes, red peppers, cabbage—yes, cabbage; do not forget cabbage. Their water was polluted, so they had to buy water and keep a large container in the dining room.
At the meetings in Perm, people lined up and got saved as fast as we could preach the gospel. At one meeting, they were taking the Lord’s Table, and I spoke on consecration.
After we shut off the slides, I wanted to share some things from the Word of God that impressed me. Turn to Acts 2.
When I go on a venture like this, I always ask the Lord, “Why am I here?” A brother met me at the Richmond Conference and said, “Brother, they have many things, but one thing they do not have is teaching. Would you please come and teach in these Bible schools?”
My brother had such a burden to go, so I said, “Yes, okay, I will go.” Then my brother backed out, so I ended up going. I always wondered, “Why am I here?” Of course, I was glad to preach the gospel.
I was wonderfully blessed by my visit because it was like touching the reality that you see in the Book of Acts. That is all I can say.
In Acts 2, we know these verses so well, beginning with verse 42:
And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers.
And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.
And all that believed were together, and had all things common;
And they sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all, according as any man had need.
And day by day, continuing stedfastly with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home, they took their food with gladness and singleness of heart,
Praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to them day by day those that were saved.—Acts 2:42-47
Then in Acts 4, beginning with verse 32:
And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and soul: and not one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.
And with great power gave the apostles their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all.
For neither was there among them any that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold,
And laid them at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto each, according as any one had need.—Acts 4:32-35
I am privileged to travel around. I wish all of you could go with me on some of these trips, because we learn more than we ever deposit in a place. I went there and touched this reality they have, and it was an amazing thing.
Notice that little phrase in Acts 4:33: “Great grace was upon them all.” In its context, it is not merely saying that they preached the gospel by grace or lived a high level of oneness by grace, though that is true.
It is talking about the fact that they were so full of the Lord that they themselves were manifestations of the grace of God. The next line says, “For neither was there among them any that lacked.”
They were so in the Lord and so together as one that it was such a manifestation of the Lord that you could see the grace that is in Jesus Christ among them. They were so generous with one another, and so loving with one another. That is what it means. Nobody had a need because great grace was upon them all.
I touched some of that great grace in Russia. They had one heart and one soul. The church was only nine years old, because that was when Russia opened up and those two brothers went from Ukraine with nothing and preached the gospel.
Now this is what is happening. It is all young, all new, and full of great grace. They have one heart. They love the Lord, and they love one another. You should see them. It is amazing how much they love one another.
There are some signs of this great grace in the Book of Acts. The brothers in charge had a kingdom burden—not for kingdom building, but a burden for the kingdom. They preached the gospel wherever they could. They cared nothing for themselves. Their lives were being wasted for the Lord.
They had a vision for all Russia coming to the Lord. That was all they talked about. They met with pastors and prayed about areas where nobody had gone.
There are places in Russia with millions of people where there is not even a church preaching the gospel. We went through some places so remote that they did not even know what Russian Orthodox churches were. Russia is such a large and remote place.
Perm and Izhevsk are in the region of the Gulag. There were forty-seven prisons there. Political and religious prisoners were held there. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned in that region. Many former prisoners now live in the area. It is a region of prisoners.
But these believers had a burden. They had what I call a kingdom theology. Do you know what kingdom theology means? They did not have a theology; they had life.
Everybody who was saved served. They did not understand somebody having Jesus as Savior but not as Lord. Their theology was very young and not well developed. They had not thought everything through, because all they were doing was understanding the Gospels. But they were living by the life.
They had nothing—but they had the name of Jesus. They also had the fear and esteem of the people in the area. Healings were regular, God moved, and many people were saved.
Dima, the man who was probably killed, had been involved with the mob. A major in the KGB came to him and said, “You have to help my son. He is a heroin addict and almost ready to die. You have to take him into the rehab center.”
The brother said, “Not unless you get saved.” The major asked how he could get saved. The brother said, “You have to come to the church meeting and hear the gospel.”
So the major brought his son to the Sunday meeting. They preached the gospel. The son was not touched or affected, but the KGB major got saved.
He had nowhere else to go. All the money in Russia could not save his son. He was a rich man, but he got saved. His son had wasted all his riches on drugs, and now he had nothing. But you should have seen his face beaming—he loved the Lord.
Now he was going around with two other people to places that had never heard the gospel, showing the Jesus film in Russian. I met him. He was going out. It was amazing, because they had the name of Jesus.
They were richer than we are. We have so much, and we trust in so much. They had nothing. They really prayed for their daily bread, and it came.
Stories of people dropping off potatoes, food, and other things were daily occurrences. The way the Lord faithfully dealt with individuals serving Him was an amazing story. They were living in kingdom reality.
They were very young. They also had great problems and great imperfections. I do not even want to go into some of them, because you do not need to see that side. Just know that they had great problems there. Well, we are all in the same club.
They had many things they were doing wrong. These two leaders had learned, during their brief time in Bible school, a lot of things that would have to be unlearned. Systems and methods had come in, especially the American way of doing things.
They liked the American way of doing things. Everybody was quite taken with Benny Hinn and anything else that came along. They were open to any method, anything. But they were open and malleable.
When they heard of another way, or a higher way, they listened. Brother Bob, who was with me, was a precious brother with a big heart. He had been saved through Brother Gene Edwards and others.
I remember him telling these people about the church: “Many people are being saved here. You cannot keep building church buildings. The house church is what God is doing here. Do you not see it? Stay there and keep multiplying that way.”
They said, “Wow, what a great idea. We never heard this before.” They were absolutely open because they were so cut off. Fortunately, not too many people went through there.
If they were in Moscow, forget it. Moscow was completely jaded; it was Western. But this was far enough out in Asia, on the border of Siberia. Who wants to go to Siberia in November? I volunteered.
Out there they were open, though there were many problems. They were still malleable, I hoped.
I went there as a joint supply. I was glad to give away some things in Jesus’ name, and it was a great blessing to the people and situations to which I gave.
But when you go away, as all of you probably know, you realize why you are where you are back home.
Let me tell you two things that happened. I was speaking all day long in these Bible schools. I told them everything I knew, and then I pretty much went through everything Jerry knew. Not really. The more you give away, the more you get. My God is great.
When I finished at the first Bible school, they wanted to give me a little picture to thank me for coming. They had a little ceremony. I was standing there, and they gave me the picture.
Then a sister came up on the stage. She must have been forty years old, and she was in the Bible school. She was crying uncontrollably. She spoke to the brother in charge, and then she began talking to me in Russian.
The translator said, “I know Jesus is my Savior, but I never understood what it means that Christ is my life. But when you were talking, I saw it.”
She said, “Jesus Christ is my life, and He lives in me. It explains so much. I did not know what was going on inside me. I did not know.”
What could I say? It was a free giveaway—things that you and I know about.
Then one of the young people came to me and said, “We saw a Christ we never saw before.” I had simply gone through the Old Testament and said, “I want us to see one thing: Jesus in the Old Testament, Jesus in the Gospels, and Jesus in the Epistles.”
I used Matthew, Galatians, and the wilderness journey. She was so happy. She was practically dancing as she told me.
At that point, the Lord said, “Now you see. Back home, I am doing a great work as well.”
There was a great work going on there—great faith, great power being manifested. It was like the great work of Joshua going into the Promised Land. There was faith, God was moving, and you could see His presence.
But is not the work of Nehemiah, repairing the wall, just as great? Did not Nehemiah say, “I have a great work to do, so that I cannot come down”? See Nehemiah 6:3.
They touched a little bit of Acts. But by God’s grace, we have touched a little bit of the Epistles. They knew nothing of the church, or even of Christ as life. They did not know.
Any brother or sister here who really knows Christ as your life could go there, and it would be like light bulbs going off in their eyes. You could see it while you were speaking. It was amazing.
It is God’s cross-pollination, is it not? I went over there like a bee, and they gave me this kingdom burden to bring back here.
Here is the beginning; here is the end. Here is the church in its early stages; here is the church being perfected by God. It seems like they are miles apart, but actually God is trying to connect the whole thing together.
They are trying to simplify us, bringing us back to the things that really matter. These people did not have the words; they had the life. Wow. What do you want?
I have words. You want to hear words? I have words. But they had life. The Lord is working on us. He is simplifying us.
Even yesterday, during our planning session, I thought: if I had never been to the Richmond Conference, I would have shared only the gospel with them. But they knew that already.
In 1973 or 1975, I came to the Richmond Conference. I saw Christ, and it made all the difference. I had something to share with them back there.
As I was leaving, the brothers said, “Would you please come back?” I thought they were just being nice because someone had given them some money. But they said, “No, brother. You have something we have never heard before.”
They said, “We have Americans coming through here all the time, preaching faith-and-David-and-Goliath sorts of sermons, but we have never had anybody share these things before.” The teachers were taking notes.
We need to be faithful with what the Lord is doing. I thank God for the Richmond Conference. It changed my life. Of course, it was the Lord.
I could go to that young church and help them see something more of the Lord. Then I could come back and say, “Do you know what is going on there?” We could learn that a lot of stuff we thought was important is not so important.
As we find the perfecting work of the Lord happening in our lives, it brings us back to the simplicity of the gospel and of loving one another.
Here is the thing I took away: how did they have this great grace and great power? Because the Bible says that all those who believed were of one soul and one heart.
The Lord wants to recover that among us: one soul, one heart. Nobody dared say that the possessions they had were their own.
You should see them take up an offering. Before the offering, one of the junior assistant pastors would get up and preach a fifteen-minute sermon on tithing. Every service they preached on tithing, and then they took the offering.
The people tithed, but they also brought buckets of change to the front because most of them were poor. Then there were plastic-wrapped packages. I asked, “What are those plastic packs?”
They said, “They are earmuffs, hats, gloves—anything they can give to the students and evangelists.” They gave clothes. “I have a new coat this year, so I will give my old coat.” They only had one coat.
There was nothing wrong there. Can you imagine forty or fifty Bible-school students with no place to take a bath? They had to go to forty or fifty different Christian homes to take a bath. Do you think those Christians felt it was an imposition? I do not think so.
My, how they loved one another. Can the Lord recover one soul and one heart? This is something only He can do.
He does it at the beginning, and then things get complicated. If the Lord tarries, they will get complicated too. They will be blessed, complications will come in, and they will need to understand more about grace and recovery.
But you do not have to recover what has not been lost yet. Out there, they were the only church in town. There was just one church. It was born again. It was wonderful. There was such oneness.
But there is an enemy, on the outside and on the inside. Man’s flesh gets hold of these things.
I do not know whether I will end up having a relationship with them or not, because obviously I am not Russian. But I loved what I saw. I came to report to you: the Lord is alive and well. He is preaching the gospel, and I saw it out there in Russia.
There were fearless people preaching the gospel—little babushkas this tall, preaching the gospel, with people getting saved. Jesus is their only hope. He is the only hope of Russia right now.
Economically, they were bankrupt. There was nothing but drinking—and Jesus. Praise God.
We are seeing a great awakening happen there in Russia. Of course, the enemy is waiting to persecute and close the door. We will have to wait and see what else the Lord does.
May the Lord teach us the lesson: if we were not involved in a great work here, we would have nothing to give to the great work there.
Thank God, I am more and more convinced that for us to touch Christ as the center and the fullness in the end is something they have never seen before. It is our inheritance to share with them, and then they share a little bit with us.
In this way, the Lord keeps us all healthy in Him and in His fullness. That is my testimony about Russia. Let us pray.
Lord, I thank You for all my precious brothers and sisters with a simple faith, how they found the Name because it is the only thing they have.
You open the doors, and people are saved, healed, and delivered from drugs, alcohol, and sin. How precious it is to see myriads of people saved every meeting—Your working, baptisms, breaking the ice, baptizing people outside, and all the amazing things You are doing.
O Lord, keep these brothers and sisters in the simplicity of soul and heart. Keep the enemy away, and keep away outside influences that would try to take them into doctrines, traditions, and complications.
Lord, we also pray: keep the door open for this work that You are doing out there. I pray especially for these young men and women who have given their lives to go to Tatarstan. O God, keep them and help them as they go among those people and preach the gospel.
Thank You for those who have already been saved and for the two churches started in the midst of that Islamic place. Lord, we pray for all these young evangelists—saved only two years and now preaching the gospel, with people being saved.
They are living on thirty dollars a month and potatoes, looking to Your hand and Your miraculous supply. Keep them, Lord, and keep them in Your blessing.
O Lord, teach us the beauty of the simplicity of what it means to trust in You. As we go through our own struggles back here, keep us working on the wall to beautify and perfect that which You desire.
Help us to have a relationship with all brothers and sisters in such a way that You can receive Your full satisfaction all over the world in what You are doing.
O Lord, we thank You. We are such debtors to seeing people with living faith. We are such debtors that it inspires us to faith as well.
O Lord, we trust in You. Thank You for all the blessings You give us. Enable us, as those who have, to give to those who need, in the equality of fellowship.
We thank You, Lord, for the blessings and the things that You teach us as we go from place to place. Indeed, Lord, we know we receive more than we give.
Thank You, Lord, that You are the Lord. Thank You that You are proving Yourself all over the world. Blessed be Your holy name. In Jesus’ name, amen.